The Heugh Gun Battery is a Scheduled Monument whose importance lies in the fact that it was one of only two coastal batteries in Britain to engage enemy ships in World War I, the other being the Lighthouse Battery which, before it was demolished, stood immediately to the south of the lighthouse on Hartlepool Headland.
The Battery is owned by Hartlepool Borough Council and is currently on a 50 year lease to the Heugh Gun Battery Trust, a group of volunteers whose main objective is to restore the battery to the state it was in 1914.
A map of 1740 shows the outline of a fortification labelled ‘Southeys Point Battery’, roughly in the area now occupied by the Heugh Battery. By 1841 this fortification no longer appears on the town plan, although this plan does show a battery of simpler outline called ‘East Battery’ just to the south.
Heugh Battery was first leased in December 1859 and by 1864 had four 68 pounder guns. In 1890 it was rebuilt for three guns, with the Lighthouse Battery being rebuilt the following year for a single six inch gun. Between 1899 and 1900 Heugh was modified again, at a cost of just over £4,000, to take two quick firing guns. In December 1902 Heugh was armed with two six inch mark VII breach-loading guns, with a single mark VI gun at Lighthouse which was upgraded to mark VII by 1914.
It was with these three guns that three German ships were engaged on the morning of 16th December 1914. Battle cruisers ‘Seydlitz’ and ‘Moltke’ and the heavy armoured cruiser ‘Blucher’ shelled the batteries and other targets in Hartlepool from 8.00am for nearly 50 minutes, killing over 100 civilians and injuring a further 400. Two shells exploded between the batteries, killing seven soldiers but the German ships failed to disable the British guns. Contemporary reports suggest that the ships fired shells with delayed action fuses which simply bounced off the concrete aprons of the batteries, exploding amongst the houses to the rear. The gun at the Lighthouse battery developed a fault and fired only 15 rounds whilst Heugh dispatched 108 rounds in response to the 500-1000 rounds fired by the ships. All three ships suffered minor damage, although sufficient to cut short the bombardment. This was the first time that the batteries engaged the enemy but they continued to act as a deterrent and were used during World War Two, when further threat to the coast was deemed unlikely. Heugh Battery was taken out of service and reduced to care and maintenance. In August 1947 the two guns of the original Heugh Battery were selected for retention as part of the nation’s post-war layout of coastal defences. The site was decommissioned at the end of 1956 when coastal artillery was finally abandoned as part of Britain’s defences.